09:40 pm - Brief return of reading WednesdayI thought last November was a bust but it's nothing like this one. Mind, last year was pure post-election funk, and this is... extreme tiredness, largely, from all the work I'm doing, and achiness from November and the perennial hurty in the lower back that nothing seems to cure. For a change, reading isn't my main activity, so I do very little reading. Yeah, OK, some of that is funk still: what's the point of reading challenges or challenging reading in the Latter Days? I just want to be elsewhere for a bit, and elsewheres are hard to come by. However-

Reading now?Still with the Kipling strange short stories. His attitudes may occasionally curl my hair, but. But. It says something that I can read him with ease and pleasure and not feel in the least futile while doing it, which I can't say about anyone else these days: so he's probably as masterly a short story writer as Gaiman says he is.

Next?Adam Thorpe's Ulverton is on its way from the library. Am hoping to find it a stylistic tour-de-force on the lines of Joyce's Ulysses but not so culturally-freighted.